Zhao said the action was in response to Washington’s refusal to rescind its designation of six more Chinese outlets as foreign missions last week, which came atop similar restrictions against other news entities imposed in June.

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US designates six Chinese media outlets as foreign missions

US designates six Chinese media outlets as foreign missions

The foreign missions label means that employees of those outlets must register as “foreign agents”, just as diplomats are required to do.

The US actions had “severely harmed” the reputation and ability to function of the Chinese media, Zhao said, adding that the measures had “gravely interfered with Sino-US cultural exchange and exposed the hypocrisy of the so-called ‘freedom of the press’ flaunted by” the United States.

Asked whether the State Department had considered the prospect of further retaliation from China against US outlets when it issued the foreign mission labels, spokeswomen Morgan Ortagus said in a statement: “We do not speculate on future Chinese [government] actions but would note the Chinese retaliation against independent media outlets in China has been escalating in recent years.”

“The actions that the US government has taken to ensure transparency of PRC propaganda entities operating in the US is a wholly separate issue,” Ortagus said.

A representative for MPR confirmed that the network had received a request for information regarding the Shanghai bureau of Marketplace, a popular business and economics radio programme it owns.

A representative for Feature Story News declined to comment; the four other news outlets did not respond to a request for comment.

Of those hit with the new regulatory requirements, several have recently published reporting on acutely sensitive issues in China, including an in-depth profile by the Los Angeles Times chronicling the rise to power of Chinese President Xi Jinping. And while covering protests in Inner Mongolia for a September story, a Times reporter was detained and physically assaulted by police, the paper said.

US paper says reporter was held in Inner Mongolia while covering protests

Shortly before the Chinese government’s announcement on Monday, another of the targeted outlets, Newsweek, published an investigative piece alleging a coordinated effort by the Chinese Communist Party to sow social unrest in the US ahead of the upcoming election.

ABC has also broadcast programming critical of Chinese government policies, including interviews with US-based relatives of those believed to have been swept up in Beijing’s crackdown against Uygurs and other ethnic minority groups in China’s northwest.

Monday’s announcement was the latest in a months-long series of tit-for-tat measures by Beijing and Washington limiting the freedom of each other’s foreign correspondents.

As bilateral tensions reached boiling point this year amid the coronavirus pandemic, Beijing has expelled journalists from the Chinese bureaus of three major US newspapers and increased regulatory burdens for more than a dozen American media entities.

In turn, Washington has forcibly reduced the headcount for several Chinese state media outlets, slashed the permitted length of stay for Chinese journalist visa holders and branded more than a dozen Chinese outlets as actors of the state.

The Trump administration has framed such policies as a means to encourage reciprocity in the bilateral relationship, while its critics have argued that such an approach is fuelling an unwinnable race to the bottom and runs counter to the vaunted principle of a free press.

Even the administration’s own former ambassador to Beijing, Terry Branstad, effectively acknowledged that the general strategy has failed to reach its objectives.

“The unfortunate thing is we’re trying to rebalance the relationship so we have fairness and reciprocity, but every time we do something, they keep it unbalanced,” Branstad told Associated Press in September, shortly before he left his post in Beijing.

Chinese journalists’ lives disrupted by new US visa restrictions

Asked whether the State Department was concerned that its pursuit of reciprocity was fueling a downward spiral in the two countries’ treatment of journalists, Ortagus said there was “no comparison between the media environments in the US and China”.

The State Department had made “multiple attempts” to resolve the discrepancy between both countries’ press freedoms, she said, “but it is clear the PRC is only interested in further restricting the free press. In contrast, the US foreign mission designation announced last week is focused on increasing the transparency of PRC government propaganda outlets in the US.”

Washington’s push for reciprocity with China comes as US President Donald Trump has intensified his criticism of journalists covering his administration before the November 3 election.

In the same week his chief of staff said the administration was “not going to control” the coronavirus, Trump accused journalists of not praising the federal government’s handling of the pandemic and suggested that they were breaking electoral law.

“We have made tremendous progress with the China Virus, but the Fake News refuses to talk about it this close to the Election,” Trump tweeted on Monday, as US coronavirus deaths stood at more than 225,000, the most of any country. “COVID, COVID, COVID is being used by them, in total coordination, in order to change our great early election numbers. Should be an election law violation!”